PEABODY — As high schoolers in Peabody in the early 2000s, Daybar and Phil Bugler remember not having many retail options on Main Street.
Two decades later, the couple wants to change that with their gourmet food retailer Eat Drink Explore (EDEX) Provisions, New England’s first black-owned cheese shop.
“We are both very passionate food people. He’s worked in the culinary world for decades, and I’ve been a gourmet food buyer and cheesemonger for several years now,” Daybar Bugler said. “So the ability for us to combine both of those together in the city where we grew up, it’s unreal.”
The shop, located on 50 Main St., takes online catering orders Monday through Friday and then opens to the public on weekends, where locals can peruse their selection of cheeses, jams, honey, and any other charcuterie needs.
EDEX Provisions is located in the same place where Gloria’s Food Store used to be, a popular sandwich shop from the 20th Century.
“Folks are always like, ‘Oh, I used to go get my work at the tannery, and then walk up and get my cold cut,’” Daybar Bugler said. “So something we’ve incorporated in this pivot is doing sandwiches here on the weekends. So every weekend, we have a cheese-focused sandwich that folks can come in and get.”
She hopes to open their doors to the public more days of the week sometime in the future, but they have to stay in this limited model until they can recoup the money they lost from a scamming contractor.
The story started in 2022 when they got a Peabody Community Development Board loan.
“One of the contingencies to this project was finding a storefront on Main Street. In Peabody, there were a couple of streets that were auctioned, but Main Street was one of them,” Daybar Bugler said. “So that spot opened up, and it was fantastic; it seemed like kismet because, honestly, before that, there wasn’t anything available.”
Next, the Buglers found a Peabody-based architect and interviewed a few contractors before narrowing it down to one who they felt understood their vision for the store.
“We checked references and things like that, and from what we could find online at the time, he seemed like a safe bet,” Daybar Bugler said. “But very quickly, after we paid our deposit, a family member fell ill all of a sudden, supposedly. He had somebody come in from Brazil, and he kind of went MIA for a little bit.”
Months went by with the Buglers putting money into rent while struggling to get in contact with the contractor, eventually setting hard deadlines and spurring him on to finish pieces of the project, but never really finishing anything.
“He was also doing many things incorrectly, and it almost felt like it was on purpose. We started to get a really weird feeling about him, and did a little bit more research,” she said. “During our project, somebody else was having issues, and I found their review on Yelp, and that started to get me a little bit more suspicious. So we tried to work with him as best we could to get the amount of money that we had paid.”
At that point, the Buglers had paid the contractor $38,000, so firing him meant reinvesting into a whole new project, so they continued trying to pry work out of him.
But the problems persisted, and the contractor wasn’t contributing, saying he was too busy on other projects. The Buglers suspected he was cycling the money around several different projects at the same time.
“Finally, it got to the point where we thought we literally can’t continue to work with this man anymore,” Daybar Bugler said. “We’re getting deeper and deeper into a financial hole that we weren’t anticipating. We also found another contractor to finish the project. We had to take out another loan to finish the project.”
EDEX Provisions made their grand opening in August of 2023, while at the same time taking the contractor to arbitration, where they were awarded the max amount of $25,000 by the judge, about $10,000 short of what he actually owed them.
But the trouble doesn’t end there, as the contractor has disappeared, and the Buglers have yet to see any of the money they were awarded in court.
“We engaged a sheriff to try and help us locate him and serve him, and it just wasn’t working,” Daybar Bugler said. “After I did my TikTok video, I had three or four other individuals who had previously worked with him and got scammed to reach out to me for any information that I had so they could also find him. None of us were having any luck.”
Luckily, thanks to creative thinking, smart business acumen from the Buglers, and support from Peabody and beyond, the financial nightmare wasn’t the end for EDEX Provisions.
Around November, the shop began running out of products on the shelves, which had originally been planned to pay off all expenses accrued during development, and they were forced to close their shop to the public.
“So, we started to lean into charcuterie, and it’s been our bread and butter ever since,” Daybar Bugler said. “We’ve been doing a good amount of catering out of our space. Monday through Friday, we take online catering orders, and we try to fulfill as many as we can.”
EDEX Provisions has also been finding support from the local business community and the connections provided by being a Peabody Area Chamber of Commerce member.
For example, Main Street neighbor Granite Coast Brewing has allowed the Buglers to set up a pop-up in the brewery on weekends, while Create and Escape partnered with them for charcuterie and painting nights.
“If it wasn’t for our Main Street small business friends and the chamber and even the city’s rec department, it’d be a lot harder for us to still be here on Main Street,” Daybar Bugler said. “We’ve had folks go to Tony, the barber next door, get their hair cut, and then come over and shop our shelves, or while they’re waiting for their appointment, they have someplace to go now.”
Losing the ability to have customers walk through the door seven days a week was a challenge for the Buglers, fearing they’d lose all the local fans excited to have a retailer of luxury foods right on Main Street when they first opened.
“It was really hard. It was very depressing. We didn’t really know which way to go. When we opened, we were retailers. That was our passion. We were passionate about cheese and gourmet foods,” Daybar Bugler said. “So having to shift your mental like that in a new direction. It took us some time. I think we really kind of got our stride back right before last summer.”
Now, EDEX Provisions has some major differences from how it operated originally, including an in-person build-your-own charcuterie cart, the first of its kind on the North Shore, according to Daybar Bugler.
“Usually, when you want charcuterie, you need to order online and wait 72 hours and pick it up at a stranger’s house,” she said. “Now you can come straight into our store and just grab it and then go to your event later that night.”
Also available is what Daybar Bugler calls the “baby cheese case,” which features 30 to 40 cheese skewers for customers to browse, as well as cheese wheels for purchase by the pound.
Of course, the cheeses are all curated by the Buglers and their years of experience, featuring an array of inclusive fromagerie that even serves the vegan market.
For the future, Edex Provisions hopes to open its doors more days of the week and to restock its inventory from when it first opened.
To that end, a Gofundme has been set up for the $25,000 awarded to them in court at gofundme.com/f/EDEX-Provisions-needs-your-help-now.
“Every day Phil and I look at each other, we’re like, I don’t know how we’re still here sometimes, but we just keep fighting. We’re fighting, and we’re trying to connect with as many people as possible and get our story out there,” Daybar Bugler said. “We want small businesses, I think they’re such an important part of building a strong community. And it was something that we want to be a part of.”
